In early January, Jeff Mangan, the founder of a small nonprofit called the Transparent Election Initiative, was preparing to launch a ballot initiative to reduce the flow of money into Montana politics when his email inbox pinged with a message from the director of a canvassing firm.
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inbox → call → firm
TEI’s measure, dubbed the Montana Plan, took aim at the rich players dumping millions of dollars of dark money into elections and tipping the scales in their favor.
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measure → dub → favor
So the content of the pitch took Mangan aback.
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content → take → Mangan
The director offered to help collect the tens of thousands of voter signatures Mangan’s group needed to qualify its initiative for Montana November ballot—for $21 to $23 dollars per signature.
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group → offer → signature
If TEI signed on, the cost just to get on the ballot could reach over $850,000, more than double TEI’s total fundraising in 2025.
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cost → sign → 2025
That price tag virtually guaranteed the nonprofit would have to find a wealthy donor to bankroll their effort aimed at…curbing the influence of wealthy donors.
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nonprofit → guarantee → donors
Mangan forwarded the email to his chief of staff.
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Mangan → forward → staff
“This is why we are doing this lol,” he wrote.
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he → do → this
Instead of paying, TEI spent months recruiting and training 711 volunteers who collected over 45,000 valid signatures from voters across the state.
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who → pay → state
Now their initiative will appear on Tuesday’s ballot as I-194.
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initiative → appear → I-194
It would stop private corporations, nonprofits, unions, and other groups from spending money to elect a Montana political candidate or pass a state ballot initiative.
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It → stop → initiative
Mangan is Montana’s former commissioner of political practices, an appointed position overseeing election integrity and transparency.
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Mangan → appoint → integrity
So he knows well that politics has a price of entry.
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politics → know → entry
He also knows that that price has risen sharply since 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that corporations had a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money in elections, as long as they didn’t coordinate with official campaigns.
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they → know → campaigns
The decision sent a flood of cash into political contests.
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decision → send → contests
And it heralded a new era of so-called “dark money,” as corporations and affluent individuals passed their dough through nonprofits to hide its origin, then funneled it to super PACs that could spend unlimited sums on election advertising, from TV ads to social media videos to mailbox flyers from groups with inscrutable names.
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that → herald → names
Billionaires’ spending on elections increased 160-fold between 2010 and 2024, according to a report from Americans for Tax Fairness.
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spending → increase → Fairness
During the last presidential election, billionaire families accounted for 1 in every 6 dollars of political spending—a total of $2.6 billion, mostly in support of Republicans.
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families → account → Republicans
Montana, like every state, has been dealing with the ramifications.
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Montana → deal → ramifications
This past primary season alone, four PACs pumped $4 million dollars into three dozen legislative races in Montana—running attack ads in low-profile contests in the kind of small towns “where strangers get noticed,” the Montana Free Press reported.
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Press → pump → towns
“It’s both that there is a lot of money, but it’s also this very specific style of very ugly politics that is felt differently in a lot of these smaller communities,” TEI Chief-of-Staff Liana Keesing explains.
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Keesing → ’ → Staff
This new era of turbocharged political spending is immensely unpopular.
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era → turbocharge → spending
In a May Politico poll, 72 percent of Americans across both parties agreed there was too much money in politics, a number that has stayed steady for years.
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that → agree → years
But reformers have struggled to challenge the system without violating Citizens United, the decision that infamously treated money as speech and corporations as people.
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that → struggle → people
The Montana Plan offers them a way forward.
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Plan → offer → way
While the measure wouldn’t undo Citizens United, it would essentially sidestep it—at least in Montana.
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it → undo → Montana
It relies on states’ long-established authority to decide the list of powers granted to corporations chartered in-state.
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It → rely → state
For over a century, states trying to attract business have declined to limit these powers, allowing companies chartered there to do anything as long as it was legal.
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it → try → anything
But the Montana Plan would remove one power from the list: their ability to spend money in elections.
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Plan → remove → elections
Tom Moore, the senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress who first conceived this strategy, argues that the Montana Plan makes Citizens United irrelevant, because without the power to spend in politics, it doesn’t matter whether corporations have the right to.
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corporations → lean → right
The distinction is a bit academic, but Moore offers an analogy: “Neither you nor I have the power to flap our wings and fly,” he explains.
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he → offer → wings
“If the Supreme Court came to us and said, ‘Hey, congratulations, you’ve got a constitutional right to fly,’ it doesn’t change that underlying reality that we don’t have the capacity.”
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we → come → capacity
The Montana Plan would apply to “artificial persons,” an umbrella term that includes nonprofits and unions as well as for-profit companies (the initiative contains a carveout for publishers of “bona fide” news and commentary).
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initiative → apply → news
It wouldn’t stop individuals—say, an Elon Musk or George Soros—from pouring millions of their personal wealth into independent political ads in Montana.
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It → stop → Montana
But it would force them to put their names on their spending, since they could no longer funnel the money through donor-obscuring nonprofits.
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they → force → nonprofits
Will the courts accept this circumventing of Citizens United?
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courts → accept → United
Hawaii has already offered a test case.
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Hawaii → offer → case
In May, Gov. Josh Green made a splash when he signed a bill similar to the Montana Plan, drawing lawsuits from the right-leaning Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and the pro-business US Chamber of Commerce who argued the new law violated the First Amendment.
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law → make → Amendment
The Montana Republican Party formally opposes the Montana Plan.
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Party → oppose → Plan
So does the Koch-aligned political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, and several local chambers of commerce and industry associations.
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group → do → commerce
…and 10 more, not listed.
The Aporia
